Crucial tool now tells all about your Mac’s memory

Jealous of those Windows types with their simple-to-use system memory scanner …

Being the owner of a lot of different types of computers, I tend to order a lot of memory online. Okay, I also tend to scrounge it from dead or dying machines, but that's not the point. The point is that I've long found Crucial's memory adviser tool to be useful in determining what kind of RAM I need, even if I don't necessarily buy it from Crucial.

By the same token, the system scanner tool is even handier for the assorted Windows-based machines that cross my path. It'll show me whether the machine I'm currently swearing at and banging with a screwdriver trying to loosen that STUPID POWER SUPPLY WHAT KIND OF MONKEY DESIGNED THIS THING...ahem. Anyway, it'll show me whether the machine in question supports DDR, DDR2, PC100, PC133, or some esoteric format only supported by HP LaserJets and DEC Rainbows or the like.

Note the use of "Windows-based" above. Unfortunately for us Mac collectors, there's no equivalent scanner tool—or at least, there wasn't until Crucial unveiled the Mac version of its system scanner this past week.

Ordinarily, a tool like this is built as some sort of ActiveX/Windows scripting component, relying on Internet Explorer's integration with the Windows OS to provide a one-step system examination process (the relative merits of this approach are left as an exercise for another time). The Mac edition is obviously different; clicking the download button actually downloads a disk image containing the scanner application. Running the application launches your default browser and displays a page with a "Click here to continue" button. Behind the scenes, the app has built a custom web form within that page, containing XML data that appears to be generated by the built-in system_profiler command-line tool. Click the button, and your results are interpreted by Crucial to produce the same sort of display you get from the Windows tool, with your current memory setup and options for upgrading.

It's actually a fairly clever way of providing the same info that the Windows version would collect, although it does raise some potential privacy concerns. For example, although the report I generated contained no information on installed applications on my computer, it did include printer information. I'm at a loss as to how that's necessary for determining how much memory is installed in my computer, but whatever. In case you're worried about those files sticking around, the tool uses the user cache to store them, which should be cleared on a reboot. (FYI: on a 10.5 system, that directory is no longer /private/var/tmp/folders.<userID>. To find yours, type getconf DARWIN_USER_TEMP_DIR in your nearest Terminal window. No, I don't understand it either.)

For the sake of disclosure, Ars does have an affiliate relationship with Crucial, although to be frank, I discovered the scanner on my own.